ASR Roofing Software – SEO Copy Case Study

ASR (Automated Systems Research) realized a 72% increase in search traffic combined with a 6.8% reduction in bounces after I rewrote their web copy.

ASR is long-standing roof estimating software company with products that serve residential roofing with lots of competition as well as commercial roofing products with no competition.

The Opportunity

The web copy for ASR, was a little dated. A freshly graduated English Literature student did a very competent job writing the original copy, but there were plenty of opportunities for improving the on-page Search Engine Optimization.

ASR’s web site is old and already ranks well for a number of relevant searches even though it has a minimum number of links. Google prefers older sites so on-page optimization should have a dramatic effect on the volume of search traffic.

Strategic Action

I restructured the site to create distinct sections for each category of roof estimating software. The old site had pages that listed downloads, demos, and prices for all products even though very few roofing companies have interest in more than a single product. Sharing information pages between distinct products creates friction in the buying process because visitors have to find their way back to the relevant product if they need more information.

Information arranged in a clear (algorithmically evident) hierarchy also seems to improve search engine optimization.

I changed the navigation to use generic product categories instead of brand-names to be more relevant to new visitors not familiar with ASR’s brands and to make it easier for search engines to understand which product is most relevant to each non-branded search.

Pages were changed to be more scannable with search keywords and trigger words emphasized in headings and bold text.

I implemented the Highslide thumbnail viewer to give visitors the option to inspect enlarged product detail images without taking too much space or taking them away from the conversion path.

Results

Within 2 weeks of making the changes search traffic shot up 70.2%. It continues to hold at an average of 72.2% for the 3 weeks since making the changes compared with the previous 3 months.

ASR is also getting more relevant search traffic. The bounce rate for search traffic is down 6.8% which means that fewer people come to the site only to decide that it is not relevant to their task.